Lark Summervilles life has few surprisesand thats just how she likes it. All she wants is to live out her angst-riddled life in her blue-collar Baltimore neighborhood, punctuated by weekly trips to her local parish, where Lark is organist, and telephone conversations with desperate souls who dial her hotline at 1-777-IPRAY4U. Then one night, Larks home is destroyed by a fire, forcing her out of her comfortable nest and back to the childhood home she has avoided for years. At Stoneleigh House, Lark is surrounded by three very different women: her grown daughter, Flannery; her barely tolerable socialite mother, Leslie; and Prisma Percy, housekeeper and family confidante, all of whom believe Lark was widowed years before. In this circle of women, Larks carefully constructed existence begins to unravel, even as the promise of a new one unfolds. But when her contrite ex-husband shows up, longing to assume his role as Flannerys father, twenty years after his desertion, Lark finds that she must face her own liesand her pastbefore a new life can unfold.From the Trade Paperback edition.